SANSA IV
"The ride back to King's Landing seemed to take forever. She was stuck inside the confines of the great creeking wheelhouse once again with everyone else, not her Mother, but more so Septa Mordane, Lady Selna and Arya. But at least it was relatively warm there, as they all sat wrapped in blankets and pelts knitting, and Wylla played her lute again, and Sansa her harp at times, as Lady Pellegrara instructed her.
Bran was still not waking up, even though it had gone more than ten days from his fall, and so Mother had chosen to stay behind, and Bran had not even moved when Sansa came into his bed to say goodbye to him. He just lay there, so still, as if he was sleeping. He already looked somehow smaller, more tired, but still like Bran. She hoped innerly that he would wake soon, and that both he and Mother would join them along the way. Father had promised to ride slowly so that they could, but Mother had inclined that she might take a ship from White Harbor down to King's Landing instead.
Sansa had liked Winterfell, even though it was cold, and she was happy to finally get to meet with her Uncle Benjen, Lady Cersei, and all of her cousins. Even though they were from the North, she thought that they still looked very handsome in their own ways. She could see that they were all like Father in their ways and appearance. King Eddard Stark fitted right in.
She had danced at the court at Winterfell as well, learning the proper Northern dances from Septa Arbane and Beryana, both the couples dances and some of the highland dances from the mountain clans. In those ones, you had to stand perfectly still and hop up and down with one or both legs at a time, keeping your arms together as if frozen by the grip of the music all the while. Sansa had thought it seemed mad at first, but she had soon come to love the sensation of it. Her slender frame was perfect for it, as Septa Arbane praised and Beryana instructed with glee. Sansa had been sure that Arya would like the hopping dances, but she could never quite get the rhythm right, and so only looked like a scolded hare stomping on the same foot in the wrong order, and Sansa laughed.
"Stop it!" Arya had said. "I'm trying my best!"
"I'm sorry", Sansa had said, gushing so much that she had to cover her mouth. "I only saw something else which was so funny just outside the window, you see..."
"Oh, just go beyond the Wall and die..." Arya cursed, and then got a smacking from Septa Mordane as Sansa rolled her eyes.
Jeyne was a natural at the flowing of the glen river dances, as they were called by some. Even better than Sansa, perhaps. It was hard to tell, and they danced together in a fine line as Septa Arbane and Beryana clapped, and the fiddlers and musicians played on in a swivelling frenzy of red fiery joy. Sansa had never felt such exhilaration before at dancing at the Red Keep. But that was to be expected. Jeyne had grown up here, after all, a true Northern girl, until she had come down to King's Landing some years back with her father Vayon to serve the King.
Sansa almost as if she could possibly have stayed on here and become the lady of the castle, after all, if only it had not been so cold. The dress with the furry inlay of the sleeves which she had brought from King's Landing did work somewhat, on the warmer days, although that was the only such she had. The rest of her dresses had been sown up on the way by the seamstresses they had brought, as her Mother had said they would.
She loved how regal and yet wild and northern she looked in her "river red", the slender dress, the short slender one with true wolf's pelt dyed red for House Tully and two linings of blueish grey at its bottoms, with a small direwolf and trout only on a small pocket at the height of her collarbones. Its collar made her neck look even taller, as well. Sansa looked at herself in the great standframe mirror as she danced, and she looked prettier than she had done ever since reaching Moat Cailin.
…
Lord Randyll Roote was a kind and gregarious, open-handed man with brown hair, a big nose, just like Pycelle almost, and a big brown beard, and he laughed and greeted all of the King's party welcome again, just as he had last time when they passed him by on their way up.
Sansa and Lady sat at the dinner table, as Sansa fed Lady a small pink piece of meat from underneath the table. Lady took it from her hand, as delicately as a queen, and then licked at her hand. Sansa giggled.
"Sansa, don't feed your direwolf at the table!" Septa Mordane scolded her. "A royal princess does not feed her dogs at table!"
"Why not?" Sansa said. "She is clean in her fur. She does not run around outside like Nymeria or Shaggydog or Grey Wind."
"A princess should not consort with beasts at table", Septa Mordane said again, breaking off another honeycomb and letting it drip over her bread.
"She's not a dog. She's a direwolf", Sansa pointed out. "It is my Father's sigil animal", Sansa said.
"Yes, it is", Arya agreed from the next table. "Are you inclining disrespect towards his house?"
She had learned the phrase 'inclining disrespect' only a day earlier, from the septa herself, and Sansa was glad for it. The septa looked maddeningly angry and mortified at the same time.
"I-... You-... You...- 'Uhh!" She flustered, and stormed off from the table.
Sansa and Arya both laughed.
"That was a good one!" Sansa said to her sister, still laughing somewhat. "Thankyou!"
"It's completely true", Arya said, shrugging with her shoulders as Nymeria hopped up on her table to the screams of Lady Roote and Haelda once again. Arya's friend had still not let go of her fears.
"Don't worry, Haelda. I've already told you don't need to worry. She knows you. She won't hurt you", Arya said, rolling her eyes as Haelda ran away to her mother for protection. She was only eight, after all, a full year younger than Arya, and far from the bravest or loudest of girls.
Suddenly they heard a sound coming from the entrance, and the door swung open to reveal the handsome golden locks of Joffrey. He stood tall and handsome, looking like a true lord of Lannister, and so gallant, as the sunlight of the day outside shone in his hair.
She had seen marginally more of him on their way down, greeting him on short occasions when they were happening to be both out on the pathway at the same time, but they were still not on first name basis with each other. She thought that he most likely would like to marry her, like most young lords everywhere they went did according to Mother and Father and the Septa, but she could not be entirely sure. He was unrefined, somewhat, but now he had seemed to grow more polite and with a slighly more regal countenance. She did not know if he had learnt it himself or if it was the work of his cousin Lord Tyrion, the imp. For his heinous appearance, the strange dwarf lord certainly was polite and kind when she had spoken to him. She guessed that it was so.
…
He bowed down at seeing her, a sight which she much liked. It allowed her to study his beautiful golden locks and doublet at even closer range. He had beautiful golden lions and wheats and lilies in elaborate patterns decorating his shoulders and his long magnificent cloak was scarlet red and shining gold as well. He almost looked like a handsome prince in waiting, she allowed herself to think. And she knew that Septa Mordane liked him as well. That much was clear.
"Princess Sansa", Joffrey said. "I beg pardon for the intrusion, but... I only must say.. How very beautiful you look today."
Sansa felt herself becoming flustering with butterflies inside at the compliment, as she corrected her sleeves and blushed prettily. But she hindered herself from being embarrassed, and acted with her best princess dignity and courtesy, from what Septa Mordane had taught her to do.
"Why, thankyou, Lord Joffrey. You certainly look handsome today as well, my lord."
They stood looking at each other for a few moments, as Sansa felt her cheeks growing red again, and she angled down her gaze towards the table for a moment, but then she realized Mordane's words of being a princess, and royalty in general, and she instead forced herself to look up, on a spot slightly above him, in the air. It was hard to do, since she still sat down, and Joffrey stood up, handsome, lanky and tall.
"I had thought to ask you a question, my princess... The weather is so fine today... Would you like to come walk with me through the forest? It would not take long, I assure you."
Sansa almost felt it even more keenly now, just as if he had been trained by his uncle Lord Tyrion, the imp, or someone else entirely to say the words, as he usually did not have such a pretty bearing on his speech, in truth, but she nonetheless accepted it and pretended that he might have come up with the speech himself.
Besides, the tiny Lord Tyrion could surely not have told him much about it back at Winterfell at least. If it was his doing, then it was most likely recent, while they were on the road through the Neck and the northern Riverlands. Lord Tyrion had left Winterfell along with Ser Jaime only two days after Bran's fall, to go up to the Wall and see how his brother fared there. He had only rejoined them later, as they were going south of Winterfell along the heaths of the barrowlands, nearing Moat Cailin.
At any rate, whether it was by his own accord or by someone else's, Joffrey was behaving politely and properly, and she would certainly make sure to appreciate it.
"I shall have to confer with my septa", she said. "But that certainly does sound like a lovely proposition for the upcoming day." She smiled.
She held her head high for a little more, smiling up at him as regally as she could. Joffrey in turn looked down somewhat, bowing with a beaming white smile, as his golden locks shone in the light of the chandeliers inside the keep, and he bowed down once again.
"All right. Thankyou, my Princess. I shall wait for your decision outside."
Sansa nodded, still holding her head up high, and doing her best to expose her high cheekbones. Mother always said it was one of her best attributes, and she did her best to remember her advise, though she was not here to tell her just now, still being back in Winterfell an eternity away with poor Bran.
She left the Septa and told Lady to wait for her at the table, in order to go and ask her Father for permission. Septa Mordane might give it, but Father's word was the final say at any moment, surely, for he was the King, and especially now that Mother was still back at Winterfell and not here. She somehow believed that it would be easier to convince Father of the idea as well, and that he would not bombard her with advice for it, as Mother or Mordane would have done.
She went with Ser Balon from the table all the way to where Father sat eating and talking, still breaking his fast by Lord Randyll, Lord Tyrion and all the rest of them.
"Father", she said, as she curtsied down, "forgive me but Lord Joffrey just asked me whether we might go on a walk together, since it is such good weather today. May I go with him?"
King Eddard Stark turned to look on his daughter, clearly surprised with the offer, but not so much that he could not handle it. He surely must have known that such a proposition would come some day, Sansa thought, as Joffrey had tried nearing her each time they had spoken on the road, and at least one time, some six or seven days past in the Neck, Father had been watching it taking place from afar, standing at the forefront of the long column with a skeptical look on his face, as he most often would do.
"Lord Joffrey..." Father considered.
Yes, of course Lord Joffrey, who else? Sansa thought. He was the only young lordling suited to walk with her among all their company, if not counting Lord Randyll's sons, of course, but the older two, Remyl and Andrew, were both around twenty and already married, or so she understood it to be.
And the youngest son, ten-year-old Robert Roote, was surely nothing special, with brown hair the colour of mud, like his father, somewhat roudy and dimwitted, running around the tables in a rowdy manner the way that boys did, kind enough, she supposed, but not chivalrous, only an immature boy, and one year her junior...
And... Well, to be honest, he was a bit unrefined as well, but more so, House Roote was not a great one, not a great house to be wed into for a royal princess, to say the least, not even amongst her grandfather Lord Hoster's major vassals, not a Mallister or a Blackwood or Bracken or a Piper, only a relatively small one, and far from befitting a princess. Not even their daughter, the beautiful 14-year-old Rebecca, with black hair and intelligent eyes, who always sat reading, would be able to hope for much more than to perhaps marry some high-ranking Rosby Frey. Anyone could see that, though Lord Randyll certainly seemed to be hoping amongst his better judgement all the same, as most petty lords did.
Father stroked his beard, scratching it a bit, looked at Lord Tyrion, and then harkled himself.
"Very well. You may go with Joffrey. So long as you don't wander off too far. I trust I don't have to tell you about that much, at least."
"Thankyou, Father! Oh, thankyou, thankyou!" She exclaimed, kissing him on the cheek.
"Make sure that you are both back within the hour", he added.
She nodded and then was on her way.
Ser Balon only followed them from the encampment over the bridge crossing the great rush of the Trident north, and to the forest bryne of the woods on the other side, however, as he seemed to accept Joffrey as her protector for the relatively short walk through the forest, she thought. If they walked too far off, Ser Balon said, there were guards that they could speak to on the other side. They had already set up yesterday night, surrounding Lord Randyll's keep and the forest all the way north to the other side of the Ruby Ford. Somewhere in the distance to the north, beyond the forest, was the crossroads inn, where they had been yesterday. When the King stayed somewhere, the entire village was concerned, and considered for.
Besides, Ser Balon knew that she was not her sister, Sansa thought. She would not wander off to look at lizard-lions or something else. She scoffed at Arya's dumb ideas for herself inside her head.
With that, she and Joffrey set out merrily, leaving Ser Balon behind, as she took his arm and smiled beautifully at him, and he smiled back, as lordly and becoming as she had ever seen a boy her age do before. Yes, Joffrey would make a good husband, she thought again. He is chivalrous and fair. Gallant, even, now that he has apparently learned the proper ways of a lord. Surely Father must see that. He is practically a golden gift, sent by the gods, though she had herself been somewhat skeptical of him at first. Now that he had seemed to mature so much, however, he was proving to be the perfect suitor, polite, admirable, and handsome and ever so gallant. She would enjoy his presence on the walk far more than she could say.
...
They walked through the forest, sharing a skin of wine that Joffrey had taken with him. It was a beautiful day, as the enormous oak trees, great lindens and sentinel trees rose up all around them, and butterflies danced in the sunlight of the high grass and bushes. The air was heavy with the scent of flowers. It was truly a magical day, as they walked, arm in arm.
"It truly is a beautiful day", Sansa said. "I know that you did not particularly like the weather up North..." She said.
Joffrey laughed somewhat, stifling a cough.
"No, it's... It was fine. Winterfell is a great castle. One of the finest in the realm. I enjoyed it despite all of its... cumberings", he said, holding so still that she almost believed him for a short while.
"Still... I suppose that my uncle could have done a better job at clearing the paths through his forest", she prodded him, close to laughing now from the memory of it all.
"Yes... " Joffrey laughed somewhat, forcing himself to see the funny part of the situation, as Arya ha told her about it and most of the moving court knew how upset he had been. She had almost forgotten about it, but when they spoke of the wheather and were walking in the forest, she became reminded of the incident again.
"The Crown Prince rides well", he once again forced himself to say, holding his slender handsome neck out in front of himself as if he was physically pushing the comment out of himself.
Sansa appreciated the comment, and easied in somewhat to the touch of his arm, though she still kept herself wary to not let him on too much, as Mordane had told her before they set out.
"If I were to go to Casterly Rock some time, I am sure that you would be a better rider there", she told him, "where you have the benefit of the home terrain".
He smiled at her, truly this time, and handsomely as ever before. His emerald green eyes gleamed with light at her. He was so beautiful.
"Thankyou, Princess. I certainly hope so."
She smiled back, as they continued on.
"Will you and Lord Tyrion be staying with us for long after we get back to the Red Keep?" She asked.
"I believe so. As long as my Father wills it."
"Your father?"
She was almost certain that Gerion Lannister was dead since long ago, but she had to be sure. Perhaps she had misunderstood something.
"Lord Gerion, you mean?"
"Lord Tywin", Joffrey corrected her, slightly annoyed all of a sudden, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Oh... Yes, of course."
She ignored the strangeness, keeping silent and deciding that she would ask her Father about the issue later when they got back.
Perhaps he was only drunk already, she thought. Drink certainly did that to men, Father had said. Lord Robert Baratheon, for example, barely knew what was what when he was truly drunk, a blustering great oaf of a man in truth, who would make a scene every time, but Father's old and fast friend all the same.
"I probably shouldn't have any more wine", she said. "Father only lets me have a single cup at feasts."
"That's a shame", Joffrey said. "A royal princess should be allowed to drink as much as she likes."
"Perhaps when I am older", she said. "That will be more proper."
...
Suddenly they heard commotion, sounds of smacking and fight coming from out near the river.
"What is that sound?" Joffrey said.
It was a kind of wooden clattering, floating through the woods, the sound of smack, smack, smack.
"Stay here, my princess", Joffrey said. "I'll keep you safe."
"Wait, don't go!" She cried out, but it was too late. He braved through the brambles and bushes of the forest bryne and got out to the bright green clearing closer to the river bank of the Ruby Ford.
She ran after him, as quickly as she could in her dainty shoes and dress, stumbling almost over the stumps and gnarled roots of the forest, but finally finding her way out and treading two ferns away before her to reveal as strange a scene as she had experienced.
Arya and some large, dirty red-haired commoner boy a full head taller than her were playfighting with sticks, standing right by the flow of the river, each up on a stump, as Nymeria stood prowling beside them, watching the fight as intently as if she were a human taking note of it. Sansa thought she might have seen the boy before during their journey from Winterfell. Either he was one of the many young servant boys her Father had taken with from home, or else one of the new ones he had recruited from Winterfell to come down south and add some "much-needed fresh northern blood" into the court at the Red Keep. With his red hair, he looked more like a riverlander, however, she thought to herself.
"I am Arya wolf!" her little sister shouted, smacking with her wooden stick.
"I am Ser Mycah the Red!" the big commonboy shouted back, parrying her hit.
Sansa and Joffrey stood watching in bewilderment at the strange sight.
"Your sister. Princess Arya.", Joffrey said, only almost as stunned as she was.
Sansa nodded.
"Don't worry", Joffrey said quietly, stepping forward through the grass with his tall boots. "Like I said... I will keep you safe. And your royal sister too."
Joffrey turned around again and neared the scene with fast strides. She only saw him from behind, his long golden hair gleaming in the brightness of the sunlight as he suddenly drew forth his sword from his hilt at the side.
"You there!" He screamed at the red-haired boy. "What do you think you are doing to the Princess Arya?"
Arya stopped at the sound of it, losing her attention and looking their way. The red-haired boy took his chances from it and smacked her on her hand.
"Aye!" Arya cried out, looking at the boy with a disgruntled face.
"Answer me!" Joffrey said again, lifting up his sword and pointing it towards the boy as he started slowly walking towards him, one step at a time, still twenty feet away, but now nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve...
"She asked me to do it, m'lord. She asked me.", the boy said, finally feeling the danger of the situation.
"Asked you? She asked you to hit her with a stick? Tell me again. What... are you doing... towards Princess Arya? Playing a knight? Drop your sword, boy!"
"It's not a sword, m'lord. It's only a stick.", the boy said, lowering his stick with one hand and putting up his hand to show his non-intent with the other.
"And you're not a knight", Joffrey said slowly, closing in on the last ten, eight, six feet, and then putting his sword towards the boy's cheek, letting it stay there threateningly. "Only a butcher's boy."
"Let him go!" Arya shouted. "We were just practicing! He didn't mean any harm."
"Let him go, Joffrey!" Sansa commanded, her voice as strong and decisive as any princess's voice should be.
"Don't worry, my princess. I won't hurt him. … Much..."
His sword went into the boy's cheek slightly, only slowly, slowly, nudging at the red-haired boy's pale freckled cheek until the soft and pale skin got pierced to reveal a tiny droplet of blood suddenly trickling out in a single rivulet down his face.
"Aaaaah!" Arya screamed, hitting Joffrey over the back with her stick. Then she hit him again.
"Arya, no!" Sansa cried out.
Joffrey swung around, trying to get at Arya with his sword, suddenly furious.
"I'll gut you, you little royal bitch!" Joffrey swore, the words terrible to hear coming from his so beautiful mouth, and she felt as if everything was about to turn and topple over on itself.
Not this, not like this, no no no... Why in the Seven had her stupid sister had been here with her stupid muddy commoner friends? Everything had been going so well...
"Stop it! Joffrey, stop it! Stop it, the both of you! You're spoiling it! You're spoiling everything!" She cried out, almost close to tears now already, as Joffrey ran around like a madman, swinging his flashing steel sword at Arya while she danced around him like some forest imp creature, hopping around him and then whacking him hard at his leg before he had a chance to react.
"ARYA!" She screamed.
"You cunt! I'll show you! I'll gut you like a bloody fish!" Joffrey snarled at her, raising his sword above her as she fell backwards and down on the green grass of the ground.
Then a wild greyish brown cloud jumped up at him, a terrible but somehow familiar shape which seemed to stretch all across eternity as its long pelt ruck from the ground, hopping up almost five feet in the air and grabbing onto Joffrey's shoulder and hand with its paws and terrible fangs.
"AAAAAAAHH!" Joffrey screamed, falling down to the ground same as Arya as the great youngling direwolf started tearing savagely at his hand, growling manically all the while, its teeth barred and exposed in a wild snarl.
"ARYA!" Sansa screamed, horrified.
"Nymeria!" Arya screamed at her wolf, trying to sit up and control it, but the wolf continued on.
No, don't do that to him, please, my golden-haired lord, my golden-haired prince, Joffrey, my sweet handsome poor Lannister prince... She thought, feeling so sorry for him all of a sudden, and just being able to stand there and scream at all the bloody horror and do nothing about it as her sister and Joffrey both tugged from different ends at the wild direwolf to get it away.
Arya's bloody wolf was a menace, Sansa thought, just like she was herself. Sansa ran up to them, as close as she dared, trying her best to shout at the wolf to get it to back off, though she dared not go near it. Nymeria was not the same as Lady, and just now she was crazed, with blood in her scent.
Finally, however, they managed to get Nymeria away. Arya had pulled at her tail and hit her with the stick until she let go, and Joffrey had tried his best to wrench free.
Finally, they succeeded, and Nymeria darted off to go towards the edge of the forest, her head suddenly turned down and gnying, whinnying in shame as she wondered what she had done wrong.
Sansa sturted forward to bend down in front of her poor sweet Joffrey, as he lay there shaking, trembling, moaning in anguish. Her poor, sweet wonderful prince.
"Joffrey! Joffrey, are you all right? My poor sweet prince, what have they done to you?"
Joffrey said nothing, only shaking, moaning with his mouth open and his body curled in towards his hurt and bleeding hand, as Sansa took out her handkerchief napkin and gave it to him to bad at the blood of the wound, and stay the flooding of it, if possible.
"Don't worry, my sweet. I'll go and run and get help!" Sansa said, stroking his golden locks.
"Then GO!" Joffrey snapped at her, angrily, before he turned down again, his arm weary and his entire body shaking in shock, shuddering and moaning, not even daring to look at his soar.
Sansa felt as if something small broke within her just then. The first small touch of innocence from their relationship had been lost.
She could not believe that her golden prince would yell so profusely at her, when she was only trying to help him, and be good to him, but all the same, she understood in what enormous pain he must be, and so she tried her best to not think about it, and instead rushed off to fetch Maester Frenken, or Septa Mordane, or Ser Jory, or anyone else who could help.
The road back to the encampment was not a long one, though long enough for her dress to become torn and even her legs slightly bloodied by the thorny brush of the underground and hard stones, as she fought to keep her shoes remaining on her, while they threatened to fall off on each leap further than a feet or two. She thought that she could almost make out the shape of one of Father's banners through the thicket of the forest some three hundred feet away where it was at its thinnest, but perhaps that was only wishful thinking.
She jumped over blueberry brushes, thorns, ferns, sedges, tall grass infested with ticks, old rotting wooden branches thick with mushrooms and pine needles, green pine tree younglings, their green needle branches tearing at her dress, all the while panically thinking of what to say and what this would all mean for her and Joffrey.
Oh please, Mother dear, Maiden dear, Crone dear, don't let this come between us, please... Let him see that it was only Arya, only stupid Arya and her stupid wolf, as always, and not me... Please... Please please Mother, Maiden, Crone, please don't make him be angry at me once he comes to his senses... I am going to get help for him now... By all of the Seven... Please...
She made it to the bridge across the river, where Ser Balon stood waiting for her, and then they carried on, as Sansa told Ser Balon what had happened.
When they finally returned with Septa Mordane and Jory, Maester Frenken was apparently being fetched from far away. Sansa knelt down by Joffrey and told him that everything would be all right. He lay much in the same position as she had left him, though Arya and Nymeria, as well as the commoner boy, had apparently taken off all three. It was only her poor beautiful golden prince left, and he still lay on the ground and bled, clutching her napkin at his soar arm as it turned red and red.
"I'm so sorry, Joffrey. I'm sorry. I'm here again. We'll get the Maester. Maester Frenken will be here soon. He's on his way. Septa Mordane can see to it meanwhile."
Joffrey didn't answer, he only squirmed, laying on the ground still, and still afraid to even open his eyes at the wound he had.
"Please... " He mumbled. "Please save me from the beast... I'll never call for wolves again, I swear... Please... Please Mother, please... "
Sansa felt truly sorry for him then, and she bent down to give him a soft comforting kiss on his head. He seemed to relax, or at least not shy away.
Septa Mordane bowed herself down, turning her large heavy-weight frame down to sit on her knees in the grass. She must have weighed more than twice the amount of Mother, Sansa thought, if not even more at that.
"Hush now, my boy... Hush now, let me take care of that.", Septa Mordane soothed. "Oooh, my, that's a nasty wound indeed...-" The Septa almost fainted herself at seeing the sight.
"The bloody wolf did this?"
Septa Mordane never ever cursed. Sansa did not even believe that she had heard a curse word in all of her life that had not slipped out of Arya's mouth.
That she cursed now, for the first time in their entire lives, showed the true severity of the situation.
"Yes", Sansa admitted. "Arya's stupid wild wolf. Nymeria." She pronounced the name as if it were a curse.
"Right then. We'll certainly need the maester for this", Mordane noted. "But hold still, my lord, and let me at least bind the wound together as long..." She mumbled, and Joffrey let her, as she binded the handkerchief together hard around his arm, to stop the blood from flowing. It seemed to work.
Joffrey sat up slightly then, but only slightly, still resting his head on Septa Mordane's lap, as Sansa bent down towards him again, stroking his poor beautiful hair and telling him that everything would be all right. The beast was gone now.
"It's all right, my sweet. The beast is gone now. The wolf is gone."
"No... " Joffrey did not dare to believe her. "Noo..." He wailed. "It will be back... It will kill me for what I did..." He still would not open his eyes, shutting them in fear like a young child almost.
Septa Mordane looked at Sansa with the severest look she had ever received.
"You will find your forest demon of a sister NOW and get her and that bloody beast of hers to the King! Go on, girl!"
Sansa felt almost ready to cry at the sudden wash of anger coming from Septa Mordane, she who was elsewise never ever wroth with her, not in the closest way the way that she was with Arya at least, but now, the same as ever, Arya had made a terrible mess of everything and then just run away...
Sansa cried, already turning red in her face, and she could have cried harder, but she forced herself to be brave in spite of the septa's words, and to try her best to locate Arya before she could run off any further.
As it turned out, however, she was already far gone. The bryne of the forest was empty, at least so as far as Sansa could look and see, and neither did she see the terrible wild wolf shape of Nymeria stalking its confines. Her wildling sister and her wolf had simply run off. Of course...
…
The search for Arya held up for most of the night, as Father and all his guards went out searching with lanterns and shoutings in the night, traversing most the entire forest before finding her. It was a miracle how Arya could hide so well, especially when more than a hundred guardsmen were out looking for her, trampling through the thicket of the green ferns and deeper and deeper into the woods on the hunt after her, and after Nymeria. Most like, she was sitting and hiding underneath a fern behind a tree somewhere, Sansa thought. It would be just like her.
Sansa only saw it from afar, from the safety of the windows at Lord Randyll's keep. She sat inside, with Septa Mordane and Jeyne Poole and the others bravely standing a silent watch at her side, as the candle on the table in front of them whithered down one minute after the other in their fear...
"What if she has truly escaped this time? It would not surprise me", Jeyne said. "She is as wild as that wolf of hers. Not like Lady. Lady wouldn't hurt a fly. But Nymeria... She's a fell beast."
Sansa said nothing, but neither did she have to. Jeyne knew that she held with her in this, as she simply looked out on the dark of the forest bryne, watching her Father and Jory and all of the other guards walking knee-high in the dark green of the ferns, the skies darkening almost to black from above and all around them, disappearing slowly, further and further into the forest like small yellow lights only visible from afar...
She thought again of Joffrey.
"I just hope he is okay", she confided in her friends. "Not just his body. In his poor mind, too. He was terrified, I swear it. Absolutely terrified. My poor Joffrey... He could not even speak or look up at me when I tried to comfort him. He was too scared of what Nymeria had done to him... "
Her ladies all nodded solemnly and looked at her in support.
"I am sure that he will still love you", Wylla said. "It was only the wolf..."
They all agreed, taking her hands and telling her that it would be all right. Besides, she was the princess. Joffrey could not get mad at her, surely, not if he wanted to marry her some day. But that was precisely the thing that Sansa was worried about. Perhaps he would not want to marry her no more after this.
...
It had been another half hour as they sat there, turning cards and exchanging sorrows in sisterly compassion, before Ser Marlon mumled about there being some commotion overhead.
They all looked out through the windows, and saw a figure running through the dark, coming closer and closer, all the way back towards the keep. It was Jory, Sansa thought, as she strained her eyes to see... The hour was so late, and it was already dark...
Jory stormed in through the door, almost cracking its oaken wood against the wall behind as he breathed out in frantic takes.
"We found her", he said, his breath a steaming cloud of white against the cold night air which swept in from outside. "She is with the King."
Sansa thanked the gods that her stupid unruly sister had been found. As much as she was glad for her safety, she once again wondered at how irresponsible a person could possibly be. Arya had not only played at sticks with some dirty commoner boy, that much was to be expected, she knew, she had also ran away along with Nymeria after the wolf had attacked poor Joffrey. At times, Sansa truly could not believe how they were ever related by blood. She herself would never ever have ran away, not even if Lady were to have done something similar, which, of course, she never did.
"I believe your Father wants to see you as well", Jory told her. "Best we be on our way. To the Great Hall."
Sansa complied, though she was so tired already, as they walked through the cramped corridors all the way throug the keep towards the Great Hall, guards framing each door entrance and making the moment seem if possible even more dramatic. Why are they all in here already? Were they not out just mere moments ago, looking for Arya?
It was not Lord Randyll's own guards, either. She recognized most of them, and they all held her Father's sigil on their breastplates.
When Sansa and Jory came into the Great Hall, Father sat at the throne of the Rootes, holding council of sorts, surrounded by half a hundred guards and those of Lord Randyll's household as well, with Arya and Joffrey standing at either side beside him by the throne at the end of the room, along with Septa Mordane. Lord Tyrion was also there, standing as a tiny sour figure next to Joffrey in his scarlet doublet, though he seemed to already be quite drunk from the hour.
"Sansa", Father said, echoing from all across the hall. "Come here."
Sansa complied, walking slowly and gingerly in her night-time slippers over the cold stone floor, as she felt the looks of a hundred guards staring down on her. It was incredibly crowded in the hall.
Why are they all so angry? She thought. It was not she who had done anything wrong. It was stupid, stupid Arya, and her stupid, bloody beast wolf... Arya looked sad, but not as sad as she should expect. Perhaps she had already stood there for longer than Sansa knew, waiting through the shame which even she must surely have the decency to feel, and leaving Sansa as the only one to not know what had gone down and to have to enter into the scene like this. She felt somehow scared all of a sudden, as she saw Father's stern face.
"Stand there, Sansa", he told her, and she did as told, standing next to Arya on the left side of Father on the throne, although she hated her more than she could say in this very moment.
"We shall talk through this, everything that has happened, now that we have found your sister, and perhaps it may be so that we may get to some small semblance of justice and truth."
"What about Nymeria?" Sansa said. "It was she who attacked Joffrey. Did you find her as well?"
"There was no sign of the wolf", Ser Mandon said, his strange dead eyes looking even less present of mind than usual, standing along with the other Kingsguard to the right, by Joffrey and Tyrion, who in turn were held company by their guards, Morrec and Jyck.
It was all so strange, they were in Lord Randyll's keep, and he was surely angry that Sansa had not gone with his son Lord Robert instead, she thought, and Father was mad with her, mad with Sansa for some reason, because it had been her idea to go on a walk with Joffrey. Although it was Joffrey's idea, surely he must have known that, and in turn when the commotion had happened, it had been both Joffrey's and Arya's fault, but most of all Nymeria's fault. But Nymeria had not been found...
"What about your commoner friend?" Sansa said, almost spitting out at Arya, taking courage to her now, to feel that she was not all alone in her room. "Did he also run away?"
Arya did not answer, but gave Sansa a look of death.
"The boy ran indeed, but we found him", Ser Arys said. "Here he is."
He angled forth the young red-haired boy, whom Sansa vaguely recalled as calling himself Mycken or Mycah or something similar. He looked at Sansa with shame in his eyes, then looked down.
"Very well. What is going on, then? Are we to have some sort of trial for Nymeria?" Sansa said, doing her best to emulate her Mother, although – or perhaps precisely because – she was not there. Her Mother always had the best way of confronting Father's strange ideas, such as having a meeting in the middle of the night, instead of letting everyone going to sleep and dealing with the issue tomorrow.
But such was the lot of the king, she supposed, who must bear judgement over all his kingdoms, and now over his own children, and those children of other lords as well... And Sansa had still been awake herself, of course, dwelling on the issue about Joffrey.
He did not look her way now, she saw, still being downtrodden about his wound, which she understood, but he stood there still with her handkerchief around his arm, coupled with the proper bandaging that Maester Frenken had sorted out for him at last. He looked sour and sad, if not even proud somehow... Yes, she saw it now, he did truly resent it... He looked proud, angry and upset.
She looked to her Father again.
"Is that the way of it? Can't we hold this thing tomorrow instead? I am sure we could all do with some sleep."
Now she was walking on thin ice, she knew, but she would much rather have that than having to tell of the story again in front of Father's condemning eyes, and so late. She almost felt as if she could have fallen asleep on the floor right now, if her lady friends had been with her. They were not, however. They were still in the side [flygel] of the keep, as Sansa had been rushed in here to stand with stupid Arya for the fact that she had suddenly allowed herself to be found. Gods, she hated the way her stupid sister acted, and the way it always seemed to land on her.
"We shall talk of this now, while the memory is fresh in our minds, and then we shall get our well-earned sleep", Father said, too tired and cold in his tone to be argued with.
"Arya and Joffrey have just told me about what happened. I do not need to hear that again. Now I want to hear it from you, Sansa."
Sansa looked at her Father, and then at everyone around.
"What happened...? It is quite obvious what happened", she said, streating against. "Joffrey and I were walking, just as I said we would, and then came Arya and her commonborn friend waving sticks at eachother and Nymeria attacked Joffrey."
"Take it one step at a time", Father said, patiently.
"You saw Arya and her friend. He is named Mycah." Father signalled towards the boy with his hand. "The son of Murgon, the butcher. You saw him and Arya. Then what happened?"
"They were fighting..." Sansa said. "Fighting each other with sticks..."
She still felt the eyes of all the guards in the room angled towards her. What were they looking at? And why were they all so angry? Was it only because they had been out so long looking for Arya in the cold, as their faces and cheeks all looked flustered and red, some of them even covered in pine needles and mud, or was it because they somehow thought that this was all her fault?
What in the Seven could Arya have said? Had she somehow made the story out to be Sansa's fault? If so, that was something even worse than what she would have expected out of the mouth of her horrible sister. She felt herself growing angry now, though a princess should never be angry, nor even wroth, and so she did her best to hinder herself, and stifle the hatred flowing like black bile through her body as she felt the angering red presence of Arya still standing so idly and sour-headedly, moping by her side.
She harkled herself, as prettily as she could, and went on with her retelling of the event, such as it had happened.
"And then... Joffrey went forward..."
She felt herself talking now. She was treading on icy ground, if she was to hold up her good graces towards Joffrey, after he had been hurt. He looked up from the ground, only slightly, though not meeting the gaze of her own, and he looked every inch as upset as someone who had been hurt by a monster wolf while trying to court his lady ought to have been.
She took a deep breath, steadying herself, then continued.
"Joffrey was only looking out for me... " She said. "He was trying his best to protect me... Protect me from danger... "
She saw his eyes tineously lift, perhaps angling themselves a little higher up now, as she felt that it was the right thing to say and do. Yes. Yes, she was doing great, she told herself, as Father's long solemn face stood still as stone, judging the story from his mind within.
"And so he went up to them... Asking what they were doing..."
Sansa braced herself. Technically it was not a lie, although Joffrey had surely been much more aggresive than that.
Still, she supposed, he must have surely been aggressive if he was to protect his princess. It was his duty, after all, as a man and a lord, and as a suitor to her... Anyone would surely have been confused and angry by the sight of Arya and the butcher's boy, she reflected. It was not in truth very strange that he had reacted the way that he did. He was only trying to be protective of me, and to be brave...
"And then... They became cross. He and Arya began being angry with each other. And then... Nymeria came..."
It was true. Nymeria had come up, jumping from the bushes somehow, as Sansa had barely seen her up until then, and she had hopped up on Joffrey like a monster and torn and savaged at his arm, ripping it with blood so that her poor golden Joffrey screamed. And even Arya had told Nymeria to stop, but she had not listened. No... It was all the fault of a wild wolf, she thought. There was no need for them to be angry at each other, other than that. It was Joffrey trying to protect his mistress, his princess, his hoping-to-be future wife, and Nymeria protecting Arya as well, though as wildly as a wild direwolf...
"And then... Nymeria jumped up... And she attacked Joffrey..." Sansa breathed, trying to stifle her tears, as she saw at least a slight semblance of empathy and worry in her Father's face flickering to, and then continued. "And then... we all tried our best to writ Nymeria off from him. But she would not go. But then... Finally she did." Sansa tugged slightly at her night-time sleeves, feeling the softness of their fabric as she finised up her telling. "And then... she ran off. Joffrey was hurt, though. He was bleeding... And so I ran to get help."
The entire hall seemed to stand still, as the story settled down in the minds of those there.
Father looked at her, and then looked at Joffrey, and at Arya, and then at Sansa again.
"And what of the butcher's boy? What of Mycah? What was his role in all of this?"
"The...- Mycah... " Sansa mumbled herself. What had been his role? What would she say?
"I don't know... He was... playfighting with Arya... They were fighting... and then... I don't know..."
"Arya says that Joffrey came up and threatened him, and tore at his cheek with his sword. And he does have a sore on him. Was that the way of it?"
Sansa hesitated herself. Had that been the case? There had been all of the else. She had barely considered the small scratch that Joffrey had given the butcher's boy, but she supposed that that had not been particularly chivalrous of him, as the boy was unarmed, only some poor dirty commoner, and only armed with a stick, whereas Joffrey had his fine steel sword.
"I... He... " She hesitated. What was she to say? She could not say that Joffrey had threatened the boy, for then surely he would never look at her again, regardless of whether it was true. And she could not deny that the boy had a sore at this cheek, but how had it happened? Had the boy been any threatening towards Joffrey? She supposed not. No, of course he hadn't... He had only been playfighting with Arya, the way a stupid boy caught up in her sister's antics might.
He had been tricked by Arya to partake. Yes. That was the way. It was not the boy's fault, nor Joffrey's fault. It was all Arya's fault. She could see it clearly now, more clearly than before. A lady, most of all a princess, should not be fighting a commoner boy with sticks.
And even less so should she tell against when a young and handsome lord did his best to try and protect another young princess from the strangeness of the whole scene.
And even less than that should she not be able to control the behaviour of her wolf. Sansa herself always had perfect control of Lady. She barely even need to be told what to do.
But Nymeria did precisely as Arya, in her temper... She was a menace. Truly, Sansa decided.
"Arya... Arya was fighting with... Mycah." Was that his name? Yes, that had been his name, she was sure. Father told her just moments ago.
"And Joffrey came up to protect me. Then Arya and Joffrey had begun fighting, as Arya does not understand the proper ways of a lady, and instead wants to play a boy and act like one, even to the dangers of others and herself."
Yes. She had explained the situation perfectly now, she thought. This would be
"I asked about the sore on Mycah's face", Father said again, sternly. "Did Joffrey give it to him?"
Sansa held her breath, trying to think. What on earth could she possibly say?
She looked down on her feet, on her dress, tugging at the soft fabric of its sleeves. Father needed an answer. Everyone was looking at her.
"I don't know... It all happened so fast... I don't remember. I didn't see clear enough..."
"Liar! LIAR!" Arya screamed, attacking her with her beastly temper, just like Nymeria.
"Arya! Stop it!" Sansa screamed, trying to rid herself of her sister's grip as Arya tore at her hair.
"ARYA!" Father shouted, horrified.
Jory and Father both pulled Arya away from her, and Jory placed himself between the two sisters to hinder possible further fights between them.
"I dare say the young princess is as wild as the wolf of hers", Joffrey's guard said. Jyck, Sansa remembered his name as being. "Carousing with commoners, also. Is it altogether so strange that someone would try and safeguard her older sister Princess Sansa from such?"
Father gave Jyck a look of hard patience, as he tried his best to not show his anger.
"What kinds of people that Princess Arya chooses to surround herself with is of no concern to you, nor to anyone else", he said, slowly, and Sansa could have sworn that she had never heard King Eddard Stark sound so hateful. His voice was like ice.
"Perhaps you should be better at controling and guarding the young lord Joffrey", he suggested. Jyck was clever enough to not argue with that, at least, as he looked down at the floor, still angry but souring to a silence. Little Lord Tyrion, who stood besides, said nothing, as he contemplated the entire conversation, having put his cup of wine to the hands of the other guard, Morrec, and just at the moment stroking his pale white semblance of a beard, considering the situation with his mismatched green and black eye without a word coming from his mouth.
"I would have an apology from the mouth of young Lord Joffrey, if he can not explain otherwise how Mycah has gotten this scratch. I want you all to promise not to fight amongst yourselves again after this. And I want my daughter Arya to promise to not ever run off from the encampment without my allowance for it."
He stopped, letting the words run into the minds of those whom it concerned.
"And then I want us all to go to our beds, and wake up as better men and women in the morning."
And then I want this mismatched journey to be at an end soon, Sansa thought that she could hear Father's thoughts from across the length of his carved wooden throne, as she watched Lord Randyll and all of his family standing at the back of the wall on the other side of the room, all of his previous mirth gone away into a face of stone like that of Father at the severity of the moment.
Joffrey looked every inch as a young man truly in pain now, his poor beautiful emerald green eyes almost beginning to tear up, as he was forced to go in front of the king and beg for forgiveness. Lord Tyrion reached up whispered something discreetly into his ear, as Jyck and Morrec did their best at lifting him up to the height of Joffrey's ear, and Sansa would almost have laughed at the sight inside of her, if not for the lethal severity of the situation. Such childish notions were far gone.
Her laughs at the moment were a hundred miles away, she felt it to be. Her laughs would await her at King's Landing, when and if they ever got back safe from this entire nightmare, she thought.
Tyrion's discreet whispering to Joffrey seemed to reach its goal, as he gulped and nodded tineously to his dwarf uncle cousin, and to the guards, Jyck in especial. Then he approached afore the throne, slowly, taking care to walk as still as possible with his still hurt arm and the bandage on it.
"Your Grace..." He said, pain and tears brimming on the surface of his voice, threatening to crack, as he reluctantly bowed down in front of Father, "I promise you and all of your family that I will not ever lay my sword on the friends of the royal princess Arya in the future. You have my word, as a..." His voice almost, but only almost broke, as he continued on. "...as a Lannister of the Rock."
"An apology", Father reminded him sternly. "To Mycah."
The entire room was so tense with the strain of the moment that one could have cut through it with a cheese knife. Still, Joffrey managed, if even as stiffly as she had ever seen anyone do anything, to turn all the way over to the red-haired butcher's boy, where he stood at the sideline, his face in shame and only marked by the tiny dark red scratch of his soar scorp, which had already hardened.
And yet Father had decreed it important enough to shame Joffrey in front of all the court. The boy's father, the red-faced grotesque-looking butcher Murgon stood behind him, his arms crossed.
Joffrey knelt down, slowly, silently, in front of the butcher's boy, as a hundred guards stared on, some of them angry, some of them neutral in their visage, most of them tired as three hells after the hours-long hunt for Nymeria and simply wanting to go to bed, but forced to stay until this was all made over with.
"I am sorry..." Joffrey said, managing to still uphold some small sense of pride by nothing short of a miracle, as his gaze said the complete opposite of what his mouth did, "...that I cut you... on your cheek with my sword."
He pronounced the word cheek, as if it was such a silly thing to care about, in comparison to the savagery laid upon his entire arm by the wolf. And yet he had said the words, and said them true.
Mycah looked up, barely moving from his ground, and nodded slowly at Joffrey, his look hard.
"Thankyou, m'lord."
Father nodded deeply as well, taking his slow time.
"Thankyou, Joffrey. You may rise."
Joffrey arose, all right, though it was a slow and painful rise, as Sansa felt with every fiber inside her living body that he would want to have his revenge for this. Such a humiliation could never have aboden if he was only a few years older. But as it was now... He was still only thirteen, the same age as Mycah, two years older than her, one year younger than Robb, and only with the protection of his two guardsmen Jyck and Morrec, along with their five or six other guards, and his tiny dwarf uncle Lord Tyrion, as his shield inside the room.
Hear Me Roar was his words, as Sansa reflected... And Joffrey seemed about as far away from roaring as any one person could be at the moment... but there was another saying to the Lannisters as well, one frequently said, and not official, but much more commonly used. That of Lord Tywin. She had not understood it when she was younger, but her Mother had told her a year or so back. It could be about money, but more often, it was about revenge. A Lannister always pays his debts."
...
Joffrey stood up, however, and returned to stand at the side of his uncle, trying to make it seem like he still had some semblance of his dignity intact, as his gaze turned high into the sky of the ceiling, and Father's eyes now turned over to Arya's instead. Here it would come, Sansa thought. True justice.
"Arya." Father said. His voice was as cold as ice, once again.
Arya got afore Father as quickly as could be, surely expecting only a mild punishment as usual, her dreadful and irreproveable sister... Sansa thought. But Father surprised them all.
"For your lack of behaviour..." Father said. "I will take away your sword. The one you got from Lord Benjen. And you shall not have it back until you have kept yourself out of trouble for a full two moons. That is my judgement."
"What?" Arya was incredulous. "But I didn't even use my sword! Not on Joffrey, not even on Mycah! I only had a stick. Mycah too!"
"That does not matter. You need to be punished for once, so that you understand that your actions have consequences. Just as those of Joffrey. A sword is a great responsibility. Benjen chose to give it to you, but he does not know you full well as I do. You will not have it back until you have shown in truth that you can behave. That is my final say."
Arya stood gawking at Father, not being able to muster a single word, her stupid horselike face open in her mouth and eyes both, and Sansa felt the sweet revenge filling up inside her just then. How sweet it felt. Yes... Father's judgement was harsh, but true. It did not do well for a princess to be running around with a sword. And Arya did have to be taught a stinking lesson for once. It was perfect.
"Arya... I want you to promise to never ever run off without my allowance again. Do you hear me?"
Arya nodded, as she had done in similar requests a thousand times before. But this time might possibly be different, now that she was at least punished with not getting to keep her sword.
"I want you to say it, Arya."
"I promise... not to ever ever run off again... without your allowance. Father."
She corrected herself, curtsying clumsily. "Your Grace."
Father nodded.
"Now I would have all of you promise to not fight again, and to do your best to uphold peace amongst yourselves until we have reached King's Landing."
And then we can all roam about wild and free again, and Arya and Joffrey can fight each other with sticks... Sansa thought, but said nothing.
They all got before Father, though, and bowed down before him to promise to not fight amongst eachother, as this was the final thing to do before they could be relieved.
Father nodded a final time.
"Now... As for the wolf... " He said then. "Did you find it?"
"There was no trace of it, Your Grace", Ser Jory said.
"Well then... It seems that she has fled for the woods, and will not be back. But I hereby promise that if she were to return, then on the honour of my title as lord protector, I shall hand out the judgement over the beast myself. There can be no allowance for such dangers to infiltrate my court, if I am indeed to be a true shield to my people, and not a sword. Thus... Should the wolf return, she will be met by Ice. … That will be the end of it."
Father arose from the chair, as the hundred guardsmen and others bowed down one final time, and then they were finished. Arya looked almost teary-eyed from what Father had said, as they all left to go out of the hall, but honestly, what could she have expected if Nymeria had torn Joffrey's arm so badly that he would wear those scars for the rest of his life? Nymeria's fangs were long and sharp. They were no longer just little pups. Any more time, and she might have killed him. It was a miracle that they had managed to pry her away in time.
Arya's tears be damned, she thought. Jeyne was right. Nymeria was a fell beast.
As it turned out, her ladies had apparently reached them, as she saw when walking to exit the hall. She wondered whether they had been there in time to see Joffrey bowing before her Father, and all the rest, or if they had just came. But she could ask them in the morning. Right now they all just wanted to recline to their bedchambers and sleep.
She guessed that Father would remove his king's frozen face and become some semblance to kind old Father in the morning as well, and then there would be time to talk out about the issue for true, as family. For now, however, it was sufficed to know for all attending that the King's justice had been issued in the view of the court and realm.
Sansa slid into her bedchambers with nary a word, as the chambermaids had made it nice and comfortable for her, with flowery scents on her light blue bedspread. Not even Leyna would always do that, she thought to herself.
And so she slumbered right into the soft embrace of the bed, finally, after what felt like the longest day since Bran's fall, or perhaps even since they had left King's Landing, and dreamed sweet dreams of her and her golden prince Joffrey.
Please don't let them hurt him any more. Please by the Mother, just let us be together, and be happy together. Let him not be angry at me for the work of my Father. Please, please, please... Let us rest together, me and Joffrey, and be happy... "